Surveillance under scrutiny

GCHQ acted unlawfully when it used intelligence gathered by the US National Security Agency’s mass electronic surveillance programmes PRISM and Upstream, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled.

The relationship between the British and US intelligence agencies led to GCHQ unlawfully accessing millions of people’s private communications. The relationship between the two was discovered after civil liberties organisations brought a legal challenge in the wake of the Edward Snowden whistleblower revelations.

Last week’s ruling, Liberty & Ors v Foreign Secretary [2015] UKIPTrib 13_77-H is a landmark because it is the first time the Tribunal has found against the intelligence agencies in its 15-year history. The Tribunal was set up to consider complaints against GCHQ, MI5 and MI6.

However, the Tribunal held that GCHQ’s access to NSA intelligence is lawful from December 2014, when the secret relationship was made public.

Liberty is mounting a challenge against the Tribunal’s decision at the European Court of Human Rights—it wants more stringent safeguards on surveillance and intelligence-sharing.

Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, says: “We must not allow agencies to continue justifying mass surveillance programs using secret interpretations of secret laws.”

However, a GCHQ statement says the judgment focused on a “discrete and purely historical issue” and “confirms the UK’s bulk interception regime was fully compliant with the right to privacy at all times, both before and at the time of the legal proceedings”. A GCHQ spokesperson says: “We are pleased that the court has once again ruled that the UK’s bulk interception regime is fully lawful. It follows the court’s clear rejection of accusations of ‘mass surveillance’ in their December judgment.”